


Danger Days

by slutsofren



Series: Conventional Weapons [1]
Category: The Last of Us (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood and Injury, Bratty Reader, Cannibalism, Canon-Typical Violence, Clickers (The Last Of Us), Cordyceps Fungus (The Last of Us), Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Happy Ending, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, F/M, Gunshot Wounds, Hunters & Hunting, Hurt/Comfort, Inspired by The Last of Us (Video Games), Joel Lives (The Last of Us), Mutual Pining, Near Death Experiences, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Partners to Lovers, Protective Joel (The Last of Us), Reader-Insert, Slow Burn, Slow slow slow burn, Strangers to Lovers, The Last of Us Spoilers, Trust Issues, idiots to lovers, joel is a bit of an ass but that's okay we love him, like stupidly slow
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-22
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-12 04:53:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29629371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slutsofren/pseuds/slutsofren
Summary: You think you've settled in pretty well to Jackson, your best friend Maria was leading the community with her husband Tommy. Things were going rather fine until a turbine went south, while at the power plant, you came across two visitors. Joel needs his brother to complete a mission but you stepped in, dredging up your past with FEDRA, with the Fireflies. Shit can't hit the fan twice right?
Relationships: Joel (The Last of Us)/Original Female Character(s), Joel (The Last of Us)/Reader
Series: Conventional Weapons [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2177028
Comments: 2
Kudos: 15





	1. Summertime

**Author's Note:**

> This is heavily Pedro Pascal inspired Joel and Bella Ramsay inspired Ellie because I'm so so so excited for their casting! This will follow the second half of The Last of Us video game, taking as much accurate dialog as possible to make it as immersive to my fellow players.

You put on the worn-in boots, trying to ignore the phantom pains shooting in your left hand. The skin around the nub where your pinky used to be was swollen and throbbing. It frustrated the hell out of you. After all these years, memories and ghosts haunted you whenever the nerves flared up in your palm. Doing your best to ignore it, you laced up the last shoe and grabbed your black sherpa denim jacket, tossing it over your shoulders to keep the late summer chill away.

“Oh shit,” you whispered to yourself as you took a step outside your home, immediately being blasted by the cold.

Tonight was one of the weekly adult get-togethers at Seth’s, something most of the Jackson residents looked forward to. Usually, you’d never bother with attending but your best friend and her husband managed to convince you to come out and relax for once. Admittedly, it was rare for you to have a night off since you often volunteered to walk the perimeter of the safe zone, keeping an eye out for any activity.

Your feet shuffled along until you came to the bar, the music wafting through the air and you made your way inside.

The pub was lively tonight, you could spot a few couples having a blast dancing to the music playing from the jukebox. It seemed like tonight the adults were throwing it back and reminiscing with some old 1980s music. You called over the man himself, Seth, and he grabbed you a beer.

Thank the stars the greenhouse had a steady growth of hops, you couldn’t imagine trying to do any of this sober. You leaned against an unoccupied area of the bar table, idly watching as people danced and sipped at the bottle.

After doing this little routine, the drink was getting a little warm from the heat of your palm but that was alright, you were living in the moment. Your best friend and her husband always told you to let your hair down every once in a while, so to speak. It was near impossible to always be on edge, waiting for the next fight. For half your life this is how it’s been, it’s hard to shake off that feeling even after a couple years of relative safety.

You looked up from your drink, your eyes finding the couple on your mind. You sat watching as Maria and Tommy were in the dead center of the dance floor looking at each other like there was not a damn worry in the world. It was something you envied of the woman, if you could admit it to yourself. Not everybody finds love and some semblance of peace in the goddamn apocalypse. Good for her, good for  _ them _ .

Gustavo, an elderly Hispanic man, walked up and stood next to you. “Mija, why don’t you go dancing? You’re too pretty to be standing here alone,” he says, his subtle accent eliciting a soft smile from you.

“Because you know I’d sooner bite their heads off if they tried, tio.” Gustavo wasn’t related to you but you loved the blacksmith like family, so much that you called him your uncle.

The elder man gave a hearty laugh, his calloused hand gave your cheek a small pat. “I want to see you dance with somebody before I die,” he says as he turns to leave.

You give him an incredulous look, “Don’t keel over too soon, tio, or I’ll bring you back myself and make you wait even longer!” 

His laughter still rings in your ears long after he walks away. Your eyes steal a few more glances at the dancefloor as you turn around and abandon you nearly empty glass of beer on the countertop and resume watching how everybody sang along and moving ungraciously together. Feeling alive, living in the moment.  _ Carpe diem or some shit _ , you think.

It doesn’t take much for Maria’s perpetual scowl to mark across her face, that woman was always pissed off about something. So, when the power went out in the pub, you could only imagine the blonde woman immediately furrowing her brows, grumbling something explicit wanting to find out what cut her date night short. Being the leader of the community rarely had nights off.

The crowd inside Seth’s was slightly alarmed, power hardly ever went out in Jackson. It usually signalled the worse. You gently shoved your way to where you last saw Tommy and Maria and found her leather clad arm, “Think it’s bandits?”

“I hope not,” came from Tommy to your right, his voice low and weary.

“Alright everybody, go home. We will figure out what’s going on and we will all be back to our normal routines. Got it?” Maria’s voice was short and authoritative, something you sure scared the shit out of some of the younger kids.

Slowly, the patrons all filed out, using whatever the moon illuminated as their only guide to getting outside safely. You could hear a few curses and muttering every time it sounded like somebody walked into a stool or table, it was kind of funny.

Tommy was the first to pipe up, “Let’s head to the fence, make sure everybody is okay.”

The three of you filed out and headed straight for the perimeter, there were no sounds of shouting or gunshots which was good to note. The closer each of you got to the fence, the eerie silence met with you.

“The electric fence is down,” Maria grumbled.

You looked at her, “Think the power plant is out?”

“Probably,” she sighs, “We can leave at first light.”

After you leave them, you head straight for your home as they continued to circle the perimeter and talk with whoever was on guard duty tonight.Your home was a walk away, further out from the other homes. It’s not much outside of a small studio loft but you loved it. It’s cozy and has everything you need within a couple dozen steps.

The room is dark, naturally, but you manage to walk to the little kitchenette off to the left of your room to find your solar lantern. One of the best damn discoveries you managed to find since the pandemic hit. It turned on easily, creating a dim glow around your room. You went to your desk and started to get your backpack ready for the trip to the dam. Stuffing it of some snacks, your spare knives, and some extra bullets, each a hotter commodity than the next.

It had been rainy recently so you decided to pack a couple extra jackets and flannels, making sure you had plenty of socks to go too.

By the time you finish packing your backpack for the excursion, a soft knock arrives at your door. You opened it to find Gustavo standing there, looking bright eyed. “Mija, I heard you were headed out to the dam.”

You nodded, “Wanna come in, tio?”

“Ah, no, Antonia is waiting for me,” at the mention of his wife, the lovely woman, you wonder where she was hiding at Seth’s. The two of them hardly go far without the other. “I just wanted to come by and bring you this.” Gustavo puts a semi-large wrapped gift in your hands and you take it, shifting it this way and that.

You open it, removing the ornate paper and it opens to a brown rectangular box. You slip the lid off and find an incredible hunting knife with a leather holster. “Gustavo,” you say. Your eyes wide in adoration, looking at the handcrafted knife.

His chest puffs out in pride, “Just don’t let Tovar see it, pendejo has been trying to take it.” The two of you chuckle at the expense of his young apprentice. He was a bit of a handful and full-time idiot, you admit. 

Putting the knife down at the small table by your front door, you give Gustavo a warm hug and your thanks. He left shortly after that but not without giving the old man a kiss on the cheek and a promise to not hurt yourself with his gift, and another for keeping it away from Tovar.

You shut the door and turned back to your loft, standing in the dim light. Leaning against the door, you take a moment and close your eyes. Tomorrow’s excursion was going to be long.


	2. Kill All Your Friends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a wild joel and ellie appear at the hydroelectric power plant! and reader gets into a tiny pissing contest with the old man heheheh

Humid. It was always fucking humid. The lot of you have been out at the dam for nearly a week with little to be shown as progress. Things in Jackson were doing fine, wonderful even, and then the power went out. Turns out one of the turbines busted, it’s taken you and the whole group working day and night to repair it.

You leaned against the wall, taking in the greenery that was slowly encompassing the whole hydroelectric dam. It was rather beautiful. You glanced over to David, one of the few engineers from the old world, was hunched over the table mumbling softly to himself looking over a rather poorly drawn map of the turbines, trying to figure out what was going wrong. Then glanced to the far side of the courtyard where Tommy and Maria were, both engrossed in some tense conversation. 

Whatever they were whisper-arguing about wasn’t going to be any of your business… until Maria finds you later on to vent at least. A little push off the wall and you grabbed your rifle before swinging it onto your back, groaning that your little break was probably over by now. Today you had guard duty. How fun.

You approached the duo, hoping to simmer down whatever was going on between them, likely both were stressed beyond hell for the turbine to come back on. Maria saw you first and put her hand on her face, rubbing away some tension. She said your name and pulled you into a half hug and you didn’t miss the small thanks she whispered in your ear for interrupting.

“Goin’ back on duty, want me to keep near the front gate?”

Maria nodded, “Sounds good. I’ll follow you in a minute.”

Tommy looked at you and gave you a friendly smile. Although you were casual friends with the man long before you met Maria, he knows where your loyalties lie but also knows you have his back on the field. When you first arrived at Jackson, bloodied and bruised, Maria didn’t trust you as far as she could have tossed you, but as things go, you both wormed into the others hearts through sheer sarcasm and your ‘take no shit’ attitude.

That’s when Tommy knew he was fucked being the only person between the two of you. 

You left and went to go to your post, fanning out the jean jacket you were wearing to help relieve the humidity on your skin. The entrance to the hydroelectric dam was hellbent on attracting unwanted attention. For the near week you’ve been out here you had two bandit attacks, not to mention the ones back at Jackson, causing you to feel even stickier.

You found a spot up top the entrance to keep an eye out through the scope of your rifle, not noticing anything for another couple of hours, Maria not even coming by to her post. Just as you were going to call your shift, you noticed some slight movement across the concrete jungle of the remains of the power plant.

And some more movement.

Then more.

You grabbed your radio and phoned in, “Activity to the east. Two spotted.” The radio clicked and produced static until another click sounded.

Maria called back, “Eyes.”

“Noted. Out.”

With that, you knew exactly what to do. Everybody did. When it came down to it, nobody really did want a gunfight. When the code ‘eyes’ is spoken, it means shut up and watch. If the people pass, they go on their merry way. If they don’t, well, they typically don’t leave alive if they so much as hint at being a threat.

It’s unfortunate this is the way life is now but who are you to fight the changing tides.

You peek through your scope again, watching a dark haired man and a smaller woman work their way through the maze, figuring out how to cross the water. You took your eyes off the scope and began to watch them without the tool until they both began pushing at the gate. You grumble, “Contact made.”

Maria pops in behind you on your left and together you two and two more of the on duty guards on the other end of the gate point your rifles at the duo, revealing yourselves. The man doesn’t take notice until the girl points a gun at your companions then you and he backs off the entrance.

“Don’t even think about drawing your weapon! Tell the girl to drop hers. Now,” Maria shouts besides you.

The man backs up a couple steps, sticking his hand out to the girl, “Ellie, so as the lady says.”

She looks at him and puts her arms up in surrender, “Okay.”

Maria, still holding her rifle at the two strangers, says to the man, “Please tell me you're lost.”

“We didn’t know the place was occupied, we’re just trying to make our way through,” he points through the gate.

“Through to where?”

Then a deep voice picks up, “They're alright.”

You and Maria look away from the two down to the voice, seeing Tommy approaching the gate. “What, you know these people,” Maria asks him.

“I know him,” Tommy grumbles as he opens the gate, “He’s my goddamn brother.”

_ Oh. _

You’d heard stories of the man before, of Joel Miller. From what Tommy has said before you recalled that the man was a bit of a brute, shut off from everybody after losing his daughter. He was a hunter and did some goddamned awful things in this world but quite frankly, who hasn’t? You know you have in the past to ensure your survival. It was something Tommy hated that his brother participated in but you couldn’t blame him, not after the shit you’ve seen and done.

Joel looked at his brother and his shoulders slumped, “Tommy.”

“Holy shit,” he said and moved past the safety of the gates and went straight to Joel, wrapping his arms around him.

“How you doin’, baby brother?”

Maria shot you a look that clearly stated she didn’t trust the man, despite being her brother-in-law, she heard the same stories you did. The man was a hunter, a murderer, even a smuggler. The very kind of people that don’t bode well with Jackson. With a sigh, you both put down your rifles and headed down to the gate to meet Joel and the girl, Ellie. She walked right up to the two men and you could faintly hear Tommy say, “You got fuckin’ old.”

“Easy - it’s gonna happen to you too,” Joel quipped.

Tommy took a step back, you watched how he shuffled on his feet and introduced Maria. “Be nice to her, she sorta runs things around here.”

“Ma’am.” Joel nods his head towards her. “Thanks for not blowing my head off.”

You roll your eyes at this from where you’re watching this all unfold, internally gagging at Joel’s whole ‘southern charm’ bit. Although he should be more grateful to you for not shooting him. Maria looks at Tommy beside her, “Would’ve been embarrassing, considering you’re my brother-in-law.”

An amused smile immediately hits your lips as you watch Joel try to absorb that information. He looks between the couple a few times before Tommy says, “We all gotta get wrangled up at some point.”

Maria turns to you and you lose the smile as she extends a hand for you to approach. “And this here is my second in command,” introducing you to Joel by giving him your first name and he nods his head, both of you deciding to not say a word to each other, silently sizing the other up. His eyes don’t leave yours but for a brief moment you swear his eyes flash down your body and back up as he lets out a low huff.

_ Oh, it’s on old man _ , you think.

Maria chuckles, noticing whatever the hell is happening between you two, and she turns towards the girl. “Ellie, right? What brings you through here?”

Ellie looks towards Joel for guidance, “Uh… it’s kind of a long story.”

Tommy immediately notices all the other eyes and ears watching this interaction unfold and puts his hand on Maria’s back, picking up the clear signal for some privacy. “Why don’t we bring ‘em inside?”

“Yeah, you hungry,” she asks Ellie.

“Starving,” the girl groans. You smile a bit, feeling pretty amused at this whole thing. From the stories you’ve been told about Joel it seemed very unlikely he’d be traveling with a companion, much less a child.

Tommy steps aside as you walk back through the gate first, Maria and Ellie behind you. “False alarm. They're friendlies,” you shout, walking further in the power plant leading the group. You take a quick glance around at the other scouts on shift, watching them watch the newcomers. Everybody was on edge, everybody was wary. The fact Tommy and Maria were letting some  _ strangers  _ in, in the midst of repairing an essential component to Jackson functioning properly, was not going past anybody.

You can hear Maria as she explains the stares and the heavily armed posts to Joel somewhere behind you, “We’ve been dealing with raids. Lots of bandits in this area.”

“It’s been quiet for a few days,” Tommy adds on, explaining why they answered at the gate so aggressively, as if it was any consolation of almost killing his brother and the girl.

“What the hell are you doing here? I thought I’d find you in Jackson.”

“Been trying to bring the plant back to life,” Tommy explains.

This time you chime in, “We had it working before, but one of the turbines went south about a week ago. Been tryin’ to fix it up.”

Tommy adjusts his rifle on his shoulder. “We have electricity Joel… had. We’ll get it running again.”

Ellie runs past you, approaching a few of the horses. “No way! You guys have horses.”

“We got a whole lot of ‘em,” Tommy tells her. You watch as she puts her hand on the brown and white one, petting it softly.

Beside the horse is Cherry, one of the few horse wranglers in Jackson, she was kind and sweet, pretty young too all things considered. She was tall and bulky from years of shoving heavy loads of hay, sometimes you’d wonder what it’d be like to get tossed around by her. She’s kind of notorious for winning hand-to-hand combat scenarios in the training hall. Not that you ever went.

Cherry tells Ellie about the horse and they get to talking about the animal. You also hear Charlie over your shoulder asking Tommy for help with one of the iron shoes on another horse. You take a few steps back then marching towards the warehouse, settling against the wall next to Earl and he gives you a brief nod acknowledging you. He’s sweet, you think, you’ve never spoken to him much but you recall he’s one of the maintenance men around Jackson. Thankfully he’s the silent type and you don’t have to try and make polite small talk with him.

As you both lean against the wall quietly, you begin watching both Ellie and Joel and how they’re assessing the environment. Ellie seems very excited petting the horse and talking to Cherry but Joel looks on edge, mirroring everyone else. He catches you staring and looks away slowly, now watching Ellie talk to Cherry about going riding later on.

Maria and Tommy make their way towards you and you push off, walking up the stairs and opening the door, you faintly hear Maria talk to Earl about heading back to Jackson. The door creaks open and you let Tommy, Joel, Ellie, then Maria into the warehouse until both your and Maria’s radios crackle. “Maria, we’re in the control room. Steve’s about to start it back up. Do you wanna come check it out?”

Maria sighs and mumbles back to you, “I’d rather eat with Ellie.”

You stifle a bit of a laugh at her candor in front of the others and Tommy interjects, “It’s my turn anyway. I’ll go.”

Joel then volunteers to go with his brother, telling Ellie to go with you and Maria but not before flashing you a look that says something akin to ‘try something and I’ll hunt you’.

Before Ellie could protest, Maria pulls her along. “C’mon, Ellie. Let’s give the boys some space.”

The three of you are relatively quiet leading back to the office room where the food was. Ellie kept looking over her shoulder, likely for Joel. You started wondering how he came across her, doubting any possibility she was his daughter. Tommy would have known if that were the case.

You gave a look over at Ellie, now seeing her a little closer. She looks slightly gaunt, likely hasn’t eaten in a few days you suspect which worries you a bit. No kid should have to go without.

“When was the last time you ate,” you ask her.

She ponders for a moment, “Before we got here I was pretty sure that the next squirrel I saw I was gonna eat.”

You and Maria raised your eyebrows at her admission before gently laughing as you reached the room. Maria pulls out some jars of fruit and a container of jerky from underneath and hands it to her, “Here, eat some of this. We have better options back in Jackson but while we don’t have a full service kitchen out here, this is the best we got.”

“That’s okay! I’ll eat almost anything at this point,” she openly admits. You take notice in how expressive she is, likely warming up to you and Maria now.

The three of you get to talking, making idle chatter over a few opened mason jars and a hefty supply of jerky. The more you talk with Ellie, the more you grow to like her. She’s got a mouth of a sailor and sarcasm that’d turn any old man running. 

_ Wonder if she’s annoyed the hell out of Joel _ , you muse. Now you sit, chewing on fruit and imagining how easy it’d be to get under his skin. You’re torn out of your thoughts when the lights suddenly turn on, “Thank the damned stars! I’m ready to get out of here. Everybody is driving me up the wall.”   
  


Maria throws a loose grape at you, “Thanks a lot, asshole.”

“Anytime,” you wink.

“How long have you two known each other,” Ellie asks you both. 

You pop a piece of fruit in your mouth, “Just two years. She was already married to Tommy when I arrived.”

“Can’t believe you’re married to his brother,” Ellie groans. “Joel is such a grump, can’t imagine how the other one is.”

Maria nods and smiles, still eating some of the peaches. “Oh, trust me. Some days I want to strangle him. Didn’t expect to ever meet Joel, if I’m bein’ honest.”

“I couldn’t recognize him, not even by that photo,” you say mindlessly, reaching for your canteen and drinking water.

Ellie picks her head up a little more, “Photo? What photo?”

Maria gets up from her seat and walks to one of the duffle bags in the other room, she searches around before she pulls out a photo and when she returns, hands it to Ellie. She gestures to you, “Her and Tommy went down to Texas about a year ago, he wanted to see what was left of his and Joel’s old life and scavenge what they could.”

“We didn’t find much,” you continue, “Tommy didn’t think he’d ever see his brother again, it was like his way of saying goodbye so he took this photo of him and a couple others.”

“Who’s the girl,” Ellie asks looking at the picture.

“Sarah.” You shift in your seat, not feeling entirely comfortable with this conversation anymore. 

Maria finishes your sentence, “She was his daughter. She didn’t survive very long after the outbreak.”

Before you could try to steer the conversation in another direction, a loud siren echoed through the hall as shouts filled the warehouse.

“Bandits,” someone shouted as gunshots rang out.

You stand up and push Ellie behind you, looking for your rifle. It was too far away, tucked under one of the abandoned desks. “Fuck,” you shout as you see a handful of hunters enter the room.

Drawing the two handguns strapped to your thighs, you begin to take shots at them, not exactly hitting them where it was vital but enough to make them stumble and drop. Maria grabs you by the shoulder, “Let’s go!”

You retreat backwards into the closed off manager-type office and from the corner of your eye you see a man rise from the other side of a broken window and take aim at Ellie behind you. You whipped around and shoved against her with an ‘oof’ just as you hear something whizz past you and hit the wall above the two of you.

Hovering above Ellie, you keep her head down with your right hand, abandoning the gun beside her as you and Maria take alternating shots at the invaders. “Move, Ellie,” you tell her, lifting yourself up to give her room to maneuver into the office while shielding her.

Maria shuffles into the room after you and the girl, “There’s more coming in. We can’t take all of them.”

“Shit, okay,” you look around frantically. You were running low on bullets now, the rest of your spare ammunition was left in your backpack. In an entirely different area. Your eyes searched around the small room and you got Maria’s attention, together you pulled a nearby table into the office, barricading yourselves. 

“Under the table, now,” she yells at Ellie then looks at you.“Guess we’ll have to wait for  _ the men _ to save us,” she says a little bitterly.

Together, the three of you hid. Waiting for the echo of bullets to cease after what feels like a lifetime.

Faintly, you could hear the familiar voice of Tommy yelling and a gruff one responding, likely his brother. You released the breath you had been holding onto as the last gunshot rang out. Between you and Maria, Ellie had her hands over her ears and she slowly lowered them until jumping up and shouting “They’re all dead!”

Maria rose to her feet as Tommy and her called out for each other, “The kid’s with us!” She jumps out the shattered window and runs to her husband as they check over each other.

You help Ellie out the office room the same way and Joel looks over her the same way as she recalls the attack. “Joel, oh, man…,” Ellie begins talking so fast that she’s out of breath. “They were coming in from every direction and they were both like ‘we gotta run’ and so we dove over these tables and this huge guy blasts in with a shotgun-”

“Slow down, slow down. Listen-,” Joel cuts her off. He puts his hands on her shoulders and looks her in the eye, “Hey, hey, are you hurt?”

“No!” She looks at you, “She protected me!”

Joel follows her gaze and you look him in the eye, cocking an eyebrow at him. 

You’re not really competitive, you don’t really like attention either, but there was something about Joel fuckin’ Miller that really got to you. Maybe it was the way he seemed to be mindful of everything, maybe it was the way his eyes roamed over your body, maybe it was the fact he was unfortunately making you squirm where you stood as his hardened glare seemed to see right through you, asking you to try him.

Whatever it was, his hardened stare made you quiver ever so slightly. You took a few very mindful steps away from the man, walking towards Maria and Tommy when you caught the tail end of whatever he was saying to your best friend, “- to talk.”

It seemed like that was not what Maria wanted to hear as her already pale face grew paler and her signature scowl etched back across her face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wanna come talk about these idiots? im over on tumblr @slutsofren!


	3. Teenagers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ellie makes a break for it

You walk to Ellie, placing a hand on her shoulder. You’d left to reload your guns from the earlier bandit attack and to think about what Tommy had told you, only to return to him in a heated argument with his wife. “Have they been at it long,” you ask as you take a look towards the couple, seeing them once again in a quarrel. They were both under a lot of stress and whatever Tommy was telling her, was making it worse.

She gives you a nod, “Do you know what it’s about?”

You look to Joel, both of you connecting eyes as he leans against some of the crates. Before you could answer, Maria’s voice rose while arguing with Tommy. “Absolutely not,” Maria yelled. “You tell him to go find somebody else.”

Well that gives you an answer. You excuse yourself from Ellie’s side and approach the couple as they continued with their debate. Tommy had explained to you quickly as you both walked to your pack to reload your guns about what Joel asked of him before he worked up the nerve to tell his wife. His brother wanted him to take the girl and deliver her to the Fireflies out at the University of Eastern Colorado. Old stomping grounds for you and Tommy although he spent more time out in Boston.

“Maria, I can’t have this hanging over my head,” he argued back.

“Do you have any idea how many men we lost here today?” She began to pace, her frustration and sorrow leaking through as you take a position next to Tommy.

“I know those roads better than anyone, Maria,” he suggests. 

“It takes one,” her voice getting louder and breaking in emotion. “One fuck-up, one fuck up and I turn into one of those widows, okay?”

“I have to do this, I don’t know what else to say,” he says tiredly, looking towards you with a silent plea for back-up.

You open your mouth to suggest a wild new idea but Maria cuts you off, her anger emanating off her skin in waves. “Fine,” she starts to walk away from you and Tommy.

You put a hand out to your best friend, stopping her to make her look at you. “Maria.”

She shoots a scowl at you and storms past you, nearly bumping your shoulders as she walks right up to Joel, shoving a finger in his face, “You. If anything, a _ nything  _ at all happens to him, it’s on you.” Joel gives a tense nod and she storms off, you take a moment and begin to follow. Shooting an apologetic look to the man as you chase after her.

“Maria, hey, look at me,” you tell her as you catch up. “I’ll go, I’ll take them.”

“I-, I can’t ask you to do that,” she tells you. Hot, angry tears sit on her lashes. She’s conflicted, you can tell. She doesn’t want to chance either her best friend or husband out in the wild crazy world but you would, for her, for Tommy. You loved the man, you loved your best friend even more. Jackson was a home to you but it could function without you for a couple months, it couldn’t without Tommy. 

“I’m not asking for your permission.”

She opened her mouth to counter you but before she could argue back, both your radios crackled and clicked. “Tommy, Maria, that girl took off with one of the horses!”

_ Shit. _

You take off running, catching Maria yell through the radio to Charlie to prep the horses. You ran towards the temporary stables and found Charlie and Cherry waiting with three horses. You hop on yours, grabbing a spare rifle from him as he tells you, “She ran out the north gate. I just saw her riding on outta here.”

From your right, you see Tommy and Joel catching up and they mount on their horses as well, both taking a shotgun and you tell the wrangling duo, “Go back inside, help the others clean up if you can, talk to Maria, we’re going home today.”

He nods and the three of you take off. You look ahead in the mud and notice a trail, “She left tracks, just gotta follow them.”

“She can’t have gotten far, we’ll find her. Don’t worry,” Tommy offers to his brother.

Joel begins to mumble to himself, probably mentally reprimanding her for taking off like this. The muddied trail ventures off to an old road, littered with abandoned cars still. It made tracking the teenager harder but you held hope you’d find her soon. Just a kid on her own, you worry, can’t survive out longer past dusk.

The three of you slow down when Tommy points out more horse tracks to the right, leading off the road down a dirt trail, “She must’ve gone down here.”

Tommy led your trio and each of you kept an eye out, watching where Ellie left tracks and followed it. The path winded down some rocks, a stream or two, weaving in and out of the treeline. You all follow the route for a few minutes, not seeing any sign of Ellie stopping.

You tried to keep your worries clear of your face, hoping not to make Tommy’s brother feel some type of way. Just as Joel sped up on his horse to jump over a fallen log, a sudden burst of fire exploded underneath his horse, causing the beast to buck, knocking the older rider clean of onto the dirt.

_ Hunters. Molotov cocktails. _

“I got your back,” Tommy yells as he jumps off his horse to defend his brother from the oncoming attack.

“And I got both of yours,” you jab as you dismount. The three of you hide behind an old truck, spotting hunters. You look at Tommy and make a gesture with your right hand, index and middle finger up with your thumb tucked beneath your ring finger. “I’d say ten at most.”

He nodded and Joel looked between you two, lost. “Hunters,” his brother supplied, explaining your hand gesture.

“Go, I’ll cover you both,” taking your handguns out from your thigh holsters.

Joel takes one look at you, nods, then takes off. Pushing his way forward. You find a comfortable little nook behind the truck and begin taking shots at the hunters. Left then right, not pausing for a damned thing.

Every time you saw movement, you aimed and shot. The exchange of bullets from both sides echoed loudly in the little valley you were hunkered down in. The last thing you needed to worry about was fuckin’ clickers. Usually this far out they weren’t a problem.  _ Usually _ . Better not be too hopeful.

The hunters numbers on the opposite side were dwindling as the three of you unloaded lead into their bodies, the smell of gunpowder hitting your nose. You ducked down and shouted to Tommy, “Reload!”

You shuffled in your backpack and took out the rounds, quickly reloading both your guns. You hated that your hands were on pilot mode, automatically doing what needed to be done because you’d done it so much before. The stench of blood, gunpowder, bile, and unfinished tears. It always shocked you to your core, never getting easier. But for now, you let your body do what needed to be done, you could deal with the mental consequences later.

Tommy shouted back at you, “Reload and advance!”

You took off running, hiding behind some of the protruding rocks from the valley. Somebody was still throwing molotov cocktails, you noticed. The air began to smell like alcohol and ash. From your position, you spotted possibly three more hunters. Easily taken out.

Joel was fighting one and you watched as he hit the guy with the but of his shot gun and blew his head off point blank. You advanced further and shot the glass bottle that was in the hands of another as he lit it, the alcohol spilled on him and he screamed as he was being burned alive. Running now, you rounded the corner where you last saw Joel and saw as he was getting choked out by the final hunter, the man’s rifle pulled harshly against your ally’s neck.

Their backs were towards you as they faced Tommy, the hunter thinking he was the only threat. “Move any closer and he gets it,” he threatened in a panic.

Silently, you pocketed your handguns and unsheathed the hunting knife Gustavo gifted you from your belt. You crouched and advanced closer then sank the blade into his neck and he fell dead at your feet, taking Joel down with him.

Joel coughed as Tommy approached him, giving him a hand to help his brother up, untangling him from the hunter. He looked at you and nodded, thanking you in a hoarse voice.

“Think that’s all of them,” Tommy said. “C’mon back to the horses.”

The three of you head back down, stopping by each body to salvage whatever you could. Mentally you spat on each hunter. Not just for what they have done but also for delaying your search in finding Ellie. Seeing them up close, their now deceased bodies, you felt a bit better in your actions. Sure, taking life wasn’t easy, not in this world. But hunters, hell, even cannibals, didn’t deserve much sympathy. Not anymore.

“Thank the fuckin’ stars she didn’t get stopped by them,” you mumble to yourself thinking the worst. Mounting the horses, you all resume the hunt for Ellie, following her trail. You left the small valley and took off to the left, still seeing the fresh tracks from Ellie and her horse that you were pretty sure Cherry was stressed like hell over. 

You chanced a glance at Joel, catching him looking deep in thought. He looked worried for the girl, maybe even a little apologetic, but most of all, he looked regretful.

After following the trail for a few more minutes, the three of you came to a clearing. Tommy shouted, “Look! By the ranch! That’s our horse, she’s gotta be there.”

He pointed to the left where you could see a couple of homes and a wooden sign over the entrance saying “Hidden Pines Corral”. All three of you pulled your horses into the area and stopped where the stolen horse was at. Joel dismounted, “Area looks clear.” He shuffled through the door, progressively yelling Ellie’s name louder and louder with each call inside the house as he checked the rooms. Faintly you could hear Ellie reply from upstairs.

Joel ran up the steps, leaving you and Tommy on the first floor. As you watched Joel disappear behind the banister, you turned to Tommy. “I’ll take Joel and Ellie to the university.”

He opened his mouth to argue, much like Maria. Goddamn, they were made for each other. Always wanting to debate with you. You raised your hand to cut him off. “No, don't. I already told your wife I’m going.”

He said your name and shook his head, “You realize she’ll kill me if you don’t come back home, right?”

“Good riddance, I say,” you joked, eliciting a smile from Tommy. One thing you always admired about the man was that he wasn’t always a tight ass, could take a joke or two and diffuse. You’re pulled from your thoughts as the two of you fell in silence when Joel’s voice grew louder.

His voice carried downstairs and both of you could make out him saying something to Ellie that sounded like he was arguing with her, that her chances were better with Tommy. You grew tense at whatever it was they were yelling about, “Think they’re okay?”

“Knowin’ Joel, who knows.” The two of you fell into an awkward silence, trying not to listen into the obviously private conversation upstairs when Tommy looked over your shoulder and he pushed you back, shoving you up the stairs, “Go!”

You didn’t ask questions as you bolted up the stairs Tommy hot on your heels, running for the room at the end of the hall as silently as you could and burst through the half open door. Joel looked at you, his brow scrunched in irritation at you and whatever the hell he was arguing about with the kid. You go up to Ellie, pushing her behind you, “We got unfriendlies.”

Tommy came into the room behind you, his rifle drawn. “Get it together, we’re not alone.”

“I’ll stay up here with Ellie,” you tell Joel, pulling her towards you to bunker down by a white dresser. He draws his own weapons and both him and Tommy take off out the room quickly and silently.

As they leave you notice Ellie’s shoulders are slumped. “Hey, you good?”

Her eyes are slightly wet with unshed tears and she gives a halfhearted nod. You place your hand on her shoulder, “Come here.” You pull her into a hug. Whatever is going on between Joel and Ellie is one hell of a damper, but most of all, dangerous. Under no circumstances can either one of them be like this on the road. It would only end up with somebody hurt or dead.

Ellie returns the embrace only slightly before pulling away, “Sorry I ran off.”

“You don’t have to apologize to me, kiddo,” you say. “Cherry on the other hand…,” you trail off jokingly, trying to lighten the mood a little.

She gives you a little smile as you hear a couple of gunshots go off downstairs. It makes both you and Ellie jump a little before you hear Joel announce up the stairs, “Alright, house is clear.”

“Let’s go,” you take her hand and lead her out the room and down the stairs.

As you walk hand-in-hand, you notice how Joel’s shoulders tense up as he takes in you and Ellie. He turns around then walks stiffly to the front door and raises his shotgun, slowly taking a turn looking outside before he gives the all-clear. Ellie lets go of your hand as she walks away from you, passing Joel without giving him a glance.

Tommy walks out and offers Ellie a hand to mount her horse that she dismisses. He gives you a look, raising his eyebrows in which you return in kind and a slight shrug of your shoulders.

One of the things you cherished working alongside people like Tommy and Maria and the others on scouting missions were your abilities to converse silently, usually in regards to danger. Gestures, expressions, it was like your own private language and it worked well in intense situations. Most of all, it worked in such moments like this.

Tommy’s look vaguely resembled a  _ ‘okay, what the fuck happened there’  _ kind of look whereas you replied with a soft expression conveying,  _ ‘let them work it out’ _ .

The four of you mounted your horses without any more conversation. It seemed whatever happened between Ellie and Joel was more intense than you originally thought, it whisked off their skin the entire ride back to Jackson.

Ellie kept pace beside you, Tommy was to the front, and Joel lingered behind. The excursion was quiet aside from the gentle stomping of the hooves from the horses and sounds of nature. The sun began to settle over the mountain range to the west, still it warmed your skin. You closed your eyes to breathe it all in. Live in the moment, right?

The journey seemed to come to an apparent end as the sun really began to set, Tommy led the group to a cliff overlooking Jackson as he pulled to a stop. “There she is, kids’ll be watching movies tonight.”

The rest of you came to a stop beside him, and you watched Ellie’s face as she took in the sight. Her eyes lit up bright and on the other side you saw Joel look on in wonder. Barely concealing his thinly veiled sullen attitude. You looked over at Tommy and saw him looking proud. Of course, Jackson was a sight to behold.

“Where is this lab of theirs,” Joel cut off.

You reply softly, “University of Eastern Colorado.”

He huffs, “Go big horns.” Then he looks to the young girl, “Ellie, get off your horse, give it on back to Tommy. I’m gonna hang on to this fella, if that’s alright with you.” He pats the horse below him.

Ellie hesitates until you interject, announcing for the third time today. “I’m going with you.”

“No you’re not.”

You give him an exasperated look, “It’s not up for debate. I was a Firefly, I was stationed out of the University after leaving Boston. I can get you in the door.”

Joel shakes his head then looks at Tommy. “You know me, I made up my mind. Your wife kinda scares me,” he admits to his brother. “I don’t want her comin’ after me. For either of you.”

“Look, come back to town, let’s discuss this at least.” 

“Tommy’s right. Let’s go in for the night. Get some warm food in you, hell a bath, and an actual good nights sleep would do you both wonders,” you offer.

Joel flashes you a bit of an irritated look, “No, we don’t have time for that.”

“How much ammo do you have? Do you have medical kits? When was the last time you took a hot shower? We can stock up on necessities and let the horses rest. One night in Jackson and we can leave in the morning.” You countered.

Ellie quickly jumps at the opportunity, “Yeah! Come on, Joel, can’t we?”

“Just for the night,” Tommy also pressures.

Joel looks between the three of you but lingers on Ellie as she still sits atop the horse she (kinda) stole before finally caving. “Just for the night,” he repeats.


	4. The Ghost of You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Somehow Tommy and you convinced Joel to stay the night in Jackson, opting to leave the next morning.
> 
> Not a lot of plot but a little context and background, also the beginnings of Joel's wanderin' eyes. hint hint.

The last twelve or so hours were probably the most eventful of your tenure at Jackson, especially since becoming Maria’s right hand gal. The walls of the small community towered in front of you as the four of you approached. Tommy and yourself taking point in the front while the two strangers to Jackson were quiet behind you, either in awe or unease.

Because the sun was still setting, it was difficult to make out who replied but you think you recognized Marcus’ voice telling the others to open the gate. You looked over your shoulder to talk to Joel and Ellie, “We’ll go to the stables first, drop these boys off then take you to one of the houses. You two can get cleaned up there and we’ll bring you food and supplies.”

“Okay!” Ellie looks excitedly at you and Tommy. Beside her, Joel continues to be wary and alert. He surely trusts his younger brother, but you’re waiting for him to start something with you.

It didn’t take much for the whispering and gossip to start in Jackson. No matter how late in the night there was always a lurker, always somebody looking to stir shit, so when you started seeing more and more of the townsfolk peeping out of windows to look at the two new strangers riding alongside two of their leaders, you sent a silent thank-you to the stars that you didn’t have to linger for the whispering to swirl you.

Just the thought sent a shiver down your spine.

Tommy, who rode in front, began to point out to his brother and the girl various landmarks for the small city. The saloon, the community center, the medical building. Making a not-so-subtle attempt to let his brother know he could stay after you’d all return, live a semi-normal life in Jackson during the apocalypse.

Eventually, you fell behind Joel and Ellie making sure nobody pulled any kind of stunt from the back so you got to watch as the gruff brute shifted on his horse, looking only mildly uncomfortable that he couldn’t keep an eye on you. You wondered how his life was on the outside, how much horror plagued his nights, as it did you and everybody else who had to suffer in similar circumstances. Ellie, on the other hand, looked enthusiastic and much as an ordinary child did, despite the glaring obvious.

Approaching the stable, you pulled yourself out of those lingering thoughts, spotting Cherry and Charlie. Cherry ran up to your small group, excitedly cooing at her babies, grateful for their safe return.

Everybody jumped off their horse, handing the reins to a stablehand nearby and Ellie approached the young woman, “I’m sorry I stole your horse. I won’t do it again.”

Cherry held the horses’ bit in her hand, giving Ellie a stern look which you nearly reprimanded the woman for before she burst into a hearty laughter. “I’d never seen Tommy run so goodman fast in my life,” she howls, “I do forgive you for taking dear Lux but please, don’t do that again.”

Ellie looked down at her feet, giving a bashful promise which elicited another bout of relieved laughter from everyone watching. “Okay, yes, I’m not as young as I used to be, don’t mean I can’t run anymore Cherry,” Tommy smiles. “Anyways, let’s get outta here.”

Once again, your small group fell into silence only to be broken by the occasional point-and-see Tommy was doing as he walked beside you, telling his brother and the girl about Jackson, the little traditions the small community developed such as the movie night that fell on this evening, hoping to entice Ellie into persuading Joel to come back. As he would go on to describe the town and the various jobs everyone pulled, you’d sneak back a look over your shoulder to glance at the man every so often.

Only to catch him staring at you. Damn near every time. 

The four of you pulled up to a two story house at the end of a road, just around the corner from the Jackson cemetery. “Why don’t you two take this house for the night,” Tommy said. “It’s got hot water, firewood, pretty much everything you’d need.”

Ellie groans happily coming up beside you as you kneel to the ground and unzip your backpack. “Here,” you dig out some clothes and hand them to Ellie, “Take a shower first. The clothes might be a little big but something’s better than nothin’.”

Tommy nudges his brother, “We’ll bring you some clothes and some warm food. I think Seth has turkey burgers on the menu tonight.”

“Son of a bitch that sounds good,” you say lightly. It was true, Seth’s turkey burgers were one of the best damned things in Jackson. Even if the old man irritated the daylights out of you most days. 

“I’ll go get the food, you go get them clothes and supplies. Be back here in 30,” Tommy tells you. You gave your friend a mock salute and turned away, walking to the community center.

You chance a glance back behind you, Tommy engrossed in conversation with his brother, Ellie already running up the porch to that tempting fresh shower. As for Joel, as soon as you looked at him, it was almost as if he instinctively knew when your eyes would gaze over him for as soon as you did, his brown eyes met you.

The moment took you by surprise and you tumble slightly, catching yourself after tripping on your own damned two feet.  _ Calm down, can’t you keep your shit together _ , you chide yourself.

You tried to keep your mind occupied, tried to keep various small tasks in the forefront of your head; it wasn’t really easy considering a gruff man with a husky voice danced behind those thoughts. You barely stopped to say a quick hello to people as you passed, not wanting to give them an opportunity to ask you questions about Joel and Ellie. You saw the community center and pretty much ran the last few feet, wanting to get in and out as soon as possible.

Although you knew the pair for less than a day, it wasn’t hard to pick out a couple spare shirts and tanks for them, hoping they’d fit. Joel was easy, he looked like a man who knew his flannels whereas Ellie was more akin to graphic tees and long sleeve undershirts.Tossing the clothes into a bag, you made your way to the exit.

You shot a thanks of appreciation to Max, the man who practically ran the center, and headed out, making a quick stop to your flat. You tossed out all the dirty clothing from your pack into the laundry basket that laid haphazardly at the foot of your bed and switched it out for fresher and cleaner clothes, restocked on ammunition for your dual guns as well, lastly packing some soon-to-be expired food to eat on the road. A rapid mental check and you figured you were good to head out and left your dear little flat for the foreseeable future.

Feet thumping against the porch, you pounded at the door, calling out. “Tommy?”

When nobody answered you knocked again, “Joel? Ellie?”

Only for silence to respond. 

You check the knob and it gives under your hand and you let yourself in, heading up the stairs to check if anybody was actually here or if Joel skipped town without you. Each room you checked was empty, only pushing your worry to be an accurate assumption when you finally peered into the master bedroom. The door opened with a small creak and you were confronted with the naked and  _ wet _ image of Joel fuckin’ Miller, clad in nothing but a grey towel around his waist as he sat on the bed.

He looks up at you, watching you watching him. Your breath is stolen away, much like your brain has suddenly malfunctioned. A quick furrow of your brow and you remembered where you were, tossing the bag of clothing at the man and turning to leave, slamming the door shut behind you. Storming down the stairs and aiming for the living room, it wasn’t until you hit the final step that you realized you were holding a breath.

_ How old am I _ , you whine.  _ As if I’ve never seen a naked man before. _

You plopped down on the sofa groaning, mentally reviewing the sight of Joel sitting on the bed looking frustrated- wet hair and tan skin in all his unfortunate glory. Shaking your head in your hands you sighed, waiting for somebody to come rid you of the ever so obvious embarrassment that loomed over your mind like a cloud when the front door opened to the sounds of Tommy and Ellie talking animatedly about using the rifle to protect Joel some time ago.

Bolting from the seat you took not even a few minutes prior, you met your friend and Ellie, quickly taking the bags from them to do something with your hands rather than ringing your neck out. The two continue talking as they follow you into the kitchen, Ellie going on still on how she’s saved Joel’s life from hunters once upon a time.

Together with Tommy, the two of you set out placemats on the table and served the burgers and fries on plates, letting Ellie finish her story. Thankfully being quiet was usually a quality of yours that served you well as Tommy didn’t pick up anything odd from your demeanor.

As the last plate was set, Joel came down the stairs wearing one of the new flannels you had picked for him. A green number, much like his old one but much less ratty and dirty. You refused to look him in the eye as the food was doled out onto everybody's plates, making sure to give him and Ellie extra fries.

Sitting down at the table with everybody as the four of you dug into the food, Ellie and Joel were quiet as they consumed everything they could which elicited a knowing smile between you and Tommy. It was pretty damned clear they hadn’t eaten anything of substance in quite some time. You were only half done with your own as you got Ellie’s attention, “Hey, kid. Want to finish mine off?”

She looked at you and then to the burger in your hand that you leaned towards her. “You wouldn’t mind?”

“Nah, a growing kid like you needs to eat. Take it. I’ll start cleaning up.”

“Ellie,” Joel’s voice hinted at a scold.

You looked at him, “She can eat it. There’s more if either of you want any.” You pushed your plate to the girl and stood, beginning your usual post-meal routine of cleaning up.

“Now you two better not kill each other out there, you hear me,” Tommy started, “Especially  _ you _ .” He pointed to his brother. You caught out of the corner of your eye Joel tense up, about to argue back.

“Don’t you try to tell me what to do, baby brother,” he emphasizes the ‘baby’.

Tommy put his hands in the air, “I know how you can be, but I also know how she can be.”

This made you cock an eyebrow at him. “Do tell me Tommy Miller, how  _ can  _ I be?”

He stammered for a moment before shrugging, “Hell if I know anymore, you and Maria are gonna be the death of me.”

“Damn right,” you say. You smile and walk over to give him a kiss on the cheek. “Don’t you ever forget that.”

As you walk away, you faintly hear Tommy lean over the table and say something to his brother like, “Goddamn Californian girls.” Which made you throw a rag at his head. He had it comin’.

The trio finished up while you cleaned the kitchen giving your mind some time to go on autopilot, enjoying the opportunity to stay clear of Joel for a moment. You couldn’t figure out what it was, maybe it was that he was one of the first new strangers to come to Jackson. Maybe it was the fact he was the elusive and mysterious older brother to Tommy. Maybe it was just the fact you were fuckin’ horny. Whatever it was was beginning to get on your last nerve and you needed to focus on the task at hand- getting the duo to the University for whatever reason.

Unfortunately you finished sooner than you’d hoped then trotted to the living room and settled on the couch next to Ellie, watching Tommy get the fire going in the fireplace. She shifted in the seat, eager to ask, “So, you’re from California?”

You nodded your head, “Born and raised in the Bay Area.”

“How old were you when the virus hit,” Ellie asked excitedly. “Joel doesn’t like talking about it but it all seems so surreal.”

You shifted in your seat just a bit, feeling all the eyes on you. “I was a little older than you are now, not by much. I was still very much a kid at the time.”

“So what did you do?”

You’re taken back for a moment at the girl's questions. You could tell she meant no harm but you weren’t sure how much you could reveal about yourself to complete strangers, so you compromised with half-truths. At the very least Tommy knew what kind of person you were and you had shit all to prove to Joel.

“Well, after the breakout, I volunteered as a field medic for FEDRA for a few years. I couldn’t take it for much longer so I left. Then, I found the Fireflies, met Tommy there too,” you nodded towards the man.

“And she found her family there,” Tommy interjected. The double innuendo was clear for the two of you.

“He’s right,” you smiled faintly. “Not only did I meet the man who’d become a brother to me,” you jerked your chin towards Tommy and noticed how Joel was trying to pretend he wasn’t listening to you. You continued, “but I found my own brother there along with my uncle.”

Subtlety wasn’t your strong suit but what harm could it do to show that you knew what the hell you were talking about when it came to the militia group.

You sighed heavily recalling some of the darkest moments of your lift. “When the breakout happened, I lost everybody on that first day. The only person who I couldn’t account for was my brother, Regan. Turns out he was able to escape then he joined the Fireflies when they formed.”

“Woah, that’s incredible,” Ellie’s eyes were wide listening to your story. “Was he friends with Marlene?”

“You could say that. Without him, she would have killed me when I approached her in Boston but he vouched for me. His opinion mattered to her.”

“Why,” she asked.

“Hell if I know, hell if I could even guess. Regan was always persuasive, could get anybody to do anything if he wanted,” you said lowly, staring into the fireplace. Your memory swirled with thoughts and worries again, wondering if he was still the same brother you knew or if this world changed him like it did everybody eventually. Sure as shit changed you.

Before any of you knew it, the conversation began to idle down as if they collectively sensed your unease. Soon, Ellie’s head drooped along with her eyelids, coming to lay in your lap as if it was the most normal thing in the world. The silence didn’t stay long until Joel looked at his brother then to you, gesturing between the two of you, “What was that thing you did with your hand? When we were fighting with the hunters?”

“It’s a system we adopted here in Jackson. A bit inspired by the military, a bit from sign language. We developed it to be able to communicate if we needed total silence and it works pretty well, only those of us in Jackson can understand it,” Tommy says proudly.

“I can teach you and Ellie,” you offer. “I’d be good to know if we run into any trouble out there.” You looked down at Ellie, watching as she slept, running your fingers through her hair. She looked peaceful and part of you didn’t want to move, just so she’d get one good night’s sleep but the other argued she’d sleep better in an actual bed.

“Yeah,” Joel mumbled, “Be nice.”

You looked away from the girl in your lap and looked between the two brothers. “I’ll take this one up to bed, you get some rest too,” you told Joel. “See you in the morning, Tommy.”

Rousing the teenager awake, you walked with her to one of the bedrooms and she fell back asleep rather quickly. Seemed to barely be phased by the new scenery. You kicked off your shoes and went down the hall, claiming the last of the spare bedrooms. By the rise of the next morning, the three of you will be headed out to the one place you didn’t think you’d ever see again.

These are the thoughts that plague you until sleep catches up to you only to toss over and see sunlight peeking through the blinds into the room. You let out a small groan, hoping that you didn’t oversleep although what it really felt like was that you didn’t sleep at all and exited the room only to find your new companions talking with Tommy and Maria in the living room.

Maria spotted you as you descended the stairs and she grabbed your hand, pulling you outside. “You sure about this?”

“More than anything.”

She wants to protest, you know she does. Instead she leaves you on the porch to walk down to Cherry who was keeping two horses occupied.

You went back inside, seeing Ellie double checking her backpack, yours beside hers. You grabbed your toothbrush and some paste, trying to make yourself feel clean with running water one last time for a while only to return to Joel speaking softly to his brother.

“You take care of that wife of yours.”

“There’s a place for you here, you know,” Tommy tries to convince his brother to return.

He hesitates a moment, scratching his beard. His Spanish accent comes through the southern twang as he says, “Adios, hermanito.”

Joel looks at you, following you out of the house before mounting onto his horse, Ellie jumping on behind him. Ellie gives Tommy and Maria a small wave before Joel turns the horse around. 

Maria gives you a tight hug before you are able to get on your horse and she whispers, “You better come back or so help me.”

You pull back and give her a parting kiss on her cheek, “Kill Tommy first.” She laughs sadly at the idle threat and you mount up, giving a parting nod to your friends and then to Cherry and pull up next to Joel and Ellie, ready to tackle this next adventure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for the love on this dear little project of mine! if you wanna come talk about pedro!joel, come find me on tumblr, @slutsofren :^)


	5. Skylines and Turnstiles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arriving at the University of Eastern Colorado, things start pointing to an unwanted direction

You had been zoning out for about the last hour, only starting to pay attention as you saw the familiar red brick walls of the university. Joel had been droning on and on  _ and on _ about football and the rules of the game, teaching it to Ellie and she lapped it all up excitedly. If there was one thing you had grown to love about the girl, it was her passion for knowledge, especially of the old world.

As they talked, you recalled your adventures the past month, thanking the stars it was a rather smooth journey to get here. The three of you only encountered one group of hunters that weren’t much trouble and they were rather well stocked on supplies and food, keeping you all fed for a few days longer.

The two horses were doing well too, the long trek didn’t seem to bother them as much as you originally worried. Made the journey much smoother and shorter than you accounted for. When you all left Jackson, it was only October, now it was maybe halfway through November. You were making pretty good time on your schedule. 

“I don’t see a glass building,” Ellie told you, pulling you out of your thoughts.

“We’ll need to get to the center courtyard of the campus. You’ll see it from there, it’ll look like a mirror made of glass.” You raised a hand and pointed through some buildings, vaguely gesturing the way.

You led them into an area of the campus that led to the science center. But Joel stopped you and dismounted, giving Ellie the reins, “Stay, Callus.” After a couple feet of walking away Joel asked her, “What kind of a name is Callus, anyways?”

He goes around, searching the area for either troubles or supplies, grumbling about the name Ellie gave the horse.

“Not my fault you forgot to ask Tommy his name,” Ellie jokes and jerks her thumb at you, “Or that she didn’t know it either.”

“Hey, don’t bring me into this, kiddo. I’m just buddies with my dear Whiskey here,” you pat the neck of the black horse. He gave a little huff beneath your fingers and shook his head, enjoying the attention. “Besides, Cherry is the only one able to tell the difference between all of them.”

Joel gives you a faint smile as he reaches for the bit on Callus, guiding him through a gate into the middle of the campus that you waited by.

After being in such close proximity to each other, the two of you began warming up to the other. Of course, you still chucked snide comments at him, often calling him an old bastard when he’d piss you off or do something snide. He would reply in kind, calling you a brat and threatening you to behave.

Needless to say, that awakened a little fantasy you  _ totally  _ didn’t need of the man, eliciting some rather vivid dreams when you slept. Hinting that maybe you were unfortunately in need of a good orgasm to get it all out of your system once and for all. Being out in the middle of fuck-all nowhere made that kind of difficult.The mental imagery alone kept you up most nights on your watch while you kept an eye out as the two rested. Regardless, Joel had been a gentleman towards you, apparently all that southern charm was genuine but he was still a broody asshole most days, never once hinting he saw you in such a way despite how often you’d catch him staring.

Ellie on the other hand, took to you rather quickly. She would ask you question after question about California, FEDRA, what to expect with the Fireflies at the lab, what  _ you  _ were like before the outbreak. She was intrigued about life pre-cordyceps virus, it was as if it was a fantasy to her.

Well, you admit, you supposed it was. She was born after the virus took hold, she never got to experience the things you and Joel did in the world before.To go to a zoo, a concert, gossip with friends about who likes who in school. The only thing she knew was to keep fighting, surviving, and running. Despite how cheerful and passionate she could be about her comic books or absorbing as much knowledge as she could, you were saddened that she never got the chance to be  _ normal _ .

As much as you tried to keep some things private during her lengthy questionings, you knew her curiosity was blinding. She meant no harm, likely going to you for these questions seeing as Joel was completely shut off from his past, not that you blame him. You couldn’t imagine what he experienced from what Tommy had told you before.

Ellie looked around on the horse, “So, these places… people would live here and just study? Even though they were all grown up?”

“Yeah, study, party, and find themselves. Figure out what they wanted to do with their lives,” Joel replied. He let go of the leather strap and motioned for you and Ellie to stay where you were as he walked towards what looked to be like a loading dock and began searching.

She repeated Joel’s last sentence about finding themselves, possibly turning over the idea in her mind, after a few moments of silence of both of you watching Joel she turned to you, “Did you ever go to college?”

You shook your head, silently telling her no. “I was too young when shit hit the fan, but I would explore these buildings and take the books that were salvageable. Read them when I had the time. Tried to educate myself however I could.”

“What would you have studied if you went?”

“I don’t know,” you think. Suddenly you remembered some of your favorite books that you had stolen from these very buildings. “I really liked reading the history books that I found here. Maybe I would have done something with that. Or maybe,” you ponder, “maybe I wouldn’t have liked history if not for the whole world fucking ending.”

Ellie considers this for a moment. Then, from the corner of your eye, you watch Joel disappear behind a corner and you turn towards her, “What about you?”

Ellie scrunches her face in thought. “Art. Or maybe music. I like being creative.”

You smiled at the idea, “Ellie Williams: Comedian, Artist, Rock Star.”

Ellie smiles widely and the moment is cut short by Joel announcing somewhere above you. “There was a look-out here,” his voice calls down.

Both of you look up and see Joel leaning over a concrete railing on the second floor. “That’s a good sign,” Ellie says to him, then she looks at you and asks quietly, “Right?”

“I don’t know,” you answer honestly. You furrow your brows and begin to bite on your bottom lip, unsure of what to make of things. It’s unlike them to leave a look-out abandoned. Now that you’re thinking about it, you’re pretty damn positive you’d have come across somebody by now.

You try to get your facial expressions back in check, not wanting to worry Ellie or even Joel by making them feel like something is vastly wrong with how this looks. Before, when you were with the militia group, there were armed guards practically on every roof of this campus. They were always checking in with each other, making sure none of the infected or even hunters penetrated the walls. It wasn’t always secure or even practical, more lives were lost that way but it helped protect the lab.

You’re pulled away from your anxious thoughts as you spot Joel. He takes one last look around then comes down from the loading dock and gets back on the horse he’s sharing with Ellie and looks to you, gesturing his hand out in front of him. “Lead the way.”

You give Whiskey a little kick and he takes off, jumping over a concrete barricade then leading them up some stairs and under some ornate arches and pulling the reins to the left. With a motion of your hand you point to the science building in the distance, “There it is. The one with glass walls.”

Ellie looks over his shoulder and huffs a surprise, “It really does look like a glass mirror.”

Unfortunately there was a locked gate between the group and your destination. “Question is, how are we gonna get through here,” Joel thinks out loud.   
  


After looking around it seems the only way forward is through the crumbling buildings. Joel dismounts from Callus once again and led you both through a broken wall on the left that led to the inside of the old library.

“How many people you think are there? Fireflies, I mean,” Ellie wondered.

“Reckon it takes quite a crew to run that operation,” Joel looks at you.

You nodded at both of them idly, “Yeah, when I was here we had at least a few dozen, maybe more. I kind of kept to myself.” 

“You think there’ll be other people my age,” she asked, not letting her eyes look up towards you.

“I do.”

The three of you approached another locked gate inside the building, essentially cutting off both the library and the rest of the hall you were in from each other. Joel pulled on the handle and it creaked open, Callus and Whiskey both shuffled and whined, making you and Ellie shift on them.

“Woah, woah, woah, what is it boys,” Joel tried to calm down the horses.

Your attention got pulled away when you heard a shriek and Ellie said, “Sounds like runners.”

Joel looked back behind him then forward at you, “Stay together. I’ll go check it out.”

“Joel, no wait,” you try to argue as you dismount but he closes the gate behind him.

“Stay with her,” he tells you. “I don’t want the horses or her runnin’ off again.”

You give him a hard look that he mirrors, neither one of you wants to budge but the look in his brown eyes make you waver, finally caving into his demand. “Stay alive, you stubborn old bastard.”

His lips twitch, hints of a tense smile wishing to creep on his face. He puts his hands up on a calm gesture as he removes his backpack, removing the shotgun from it and pocketing a couple extra rounds as he stands back up. “I’ll be right back,” he says your name softly, his voice deep and rich, “I promise.”

As he walks away, you inhale a deep breath and your heart is beating. You’ve come to hate it when this happens, not that it did much. Whenever the three of you found yourselves in a tight situation with the infected, you each carried on with taking them down. You hated this, hated that he felt the need to do this on his own.

It fuckin’ sucked waiting.

Just as you were working yourself up more, you heard five consecutive shotgun blasts. Then silence. Ellie must have noticed your worry because she announced loud enough for Joel to hear, “Hey, I was thinking… I would’ve wanted to be an astronaut.”

“That a fact,” his voice rang out in the distance, echoing off the library walls.

“Yeah, can you imagine being up there all by yourself? Would’ve been cool. I’m just sayin’.”

You opened up the gate, leading Whiskey inside the library, still simmering with whatever the hell you were feeling. Ellie trotted her horse past you to another gate, this one opening with a panel and leading back outside to the courtyard on the right.

Faintly you could hear presumably Joel starting up a generator three times and then panel next to the gate lit up. You pressed the button, opening it up then went back to Whiskey, jumping up into his saddle.

Joel came back down the steps and grabbed the reins to Callus and his eyes fell on you, “Told you I’d be right back.”

“What about you? What’d you want to be,” Ellie asked him.

Joel looked away, focusing on something in the distance as you all walked out the opened gate. He scratched at his beard and admitted, “Oh… well, when I was a kid I used to want to be a… a singer.”

You raised your eyebrows and gave a small laugh, Ellie did too. “Shut up,” she said jokingly.

“I’m serious.”

“Sing something”

“Ah, no.”

“Come on, I won’t laugh,” she begged.

“I don’t think so.”

You watched as they both bickered over this, Ellie even tried to pull you into the conversation, saying your name, “Come on, tell him we won’t laugh!”

“Maybe he can treat us after a successful creation of the cure,” you compromise. Joel turns to you and ponders.

“We’ll see.”

The three of you make your way down the steps, then turning to the left, continuing your trek to the science center. Ellie gets Joel's attention, “She said she wasn’t sure what she would have done.”

“Is that so?”

You shift your weight on Whiskey, “Yeah. I mean, I like history now but back then? I didn’t really have a plan after graduating high school. I didn’t really  _ click  _ with anything, y’know?”

He absorbs that information and ponders. “Yeah, I get it.”

The silence took over and whatever anxiety you had was lessening yet amplifying the closer you got to the building, still wary of the fact you hadn’t seen any sign of the Fireflies aside from the abandoned look-out. Joel got back up on Callus as you approached the center of the school and together with Whiskey, jumped over another barricade.

The view in front of you was a much larger campus courtyard, with a giant fountain in the center decorated with a statue in the middle of it. Ellie was the first to notice a small group of bright orange monkeys and cooed at them as they chattered and swung around the clearing.   
  


“That was kinda awesome,” she said as they swung away into a nearby building.

You smiled at her reaction and asked, “First time seeing a monkey?”

She nodded and repeated, “First time seeing a monkey!”

Atop the two horses, you all keep looking around searching for a sign of life but finding nothing. Leading you all down another outside corridor. Joel offers, “Maybe these guys like to keep a low profile.”

Ellie, now sounding less energetic, half-heartedly agrees.You bank right, vaguely remembering where to go when she points to a wall to the left. “Hey, look. Fireflies.” When you turned to look, you noticed the old wall tag.

“Yeah, it was to help point the way to the building we were in, in case new recruits got lost or something like that,” you tell her.

You pull into another corridor that is also blocked with a gate. To the right of the wall is a painted sign, saying ‘disconnect generator when not on duty’ in bold white letters.

Together, each of you gets off Whiskey and Callus and attempts to lift the gate to find it won’t work. The damned thing wouldn’t budge. Joel grumbles, “Probably have to find the generator.” He walks to a barricaded doorway to the right and peers around it then kneels. “It’s gotta be through here.”

“Joel, you are not going by yourself again,” you tell him.

He looks over his shoulder at you and cocks an eyebrow at you. The two of you, once again, locked in this damned game. He sizes you up with an intense stare and he already knows he’s won. You groan loudly, “If you die in there, just remember I told you so, old man.”

“Watch Ellie, you damned brat.”

He turns and crawls under the barricade, giving you a bit of a nice show of his ass before entirely disappearing. You roll your eyes to yourself as you turn back around, standing near Ellie and the two horses.

“So,” she starts.

“So?”

“What’s going on between you and Joel?”

It was so  _ unbelievably  _ hard to keep your face in check, to keep your internal screaming from etching your facial expression. “I don’t know what you’re talking about Ellie.”

“You both look like you want to fucking kill the other in their sleep.”

“That’s because I do.”  _ Amongst other things. _

You cross your arms in front of you, mindlessly showing your defensiveness on the topic and definitely not trying to tell the obviously fourteen-year-old who has never had the sex talk about how your body is screaming with alarms to get dicked down by the first person you see. Mentally scolding yourself for your predicament. How dare he.

“That’s just Joel,” she says. “He’s always like that.”

“He needs to learn how to work as a team or else we’re all going to end up dead, or worse.”

Gunshots cut the conversation short, the two of you ducking close to the ground, both pulling out weapons. It was difficult to tell where the shots came from because the two of you were still in a tunnel but you whisper-shouted, “Joel!”

Nothing but eerie silence responded to your call, settling in your bones. It took everything you had in you to not bolt and look for the man but both you and Ellie looking around for any sign of him. “Son of a bitch, this is  _ exactly  _ what I was talking about,” you groan frustrated.

Seconds ticked by that dragged into forever-long minutes. You weren’t a nervous person on missions, always trying to stay hyper-focused but truthfully, you don’t know how you’d handle the return journey with just Ellie.

Before you could work the nerve to go search through the maze of dorms, Ellie notices him before you, “Joel! Are you okay? What happened in there?”

“More infected, I’m fine,” he shouts, exiting a door from the far left, as he runs over to where you and Ellie were standing still, waiting for him.

“Here - come open the gate!”

As Joel pulls the generator to the wall to plug it in, Ellie tells him, “Holy shit you’re lucky you came out of there alive. She almost ran in after you.”

Suddenly you felt like you couldn’t breath under your coat as you gave Joel a sheepish look. “I didn’t want to have to explain to Tommy that I got his brother killed, alright? Don’t let it get to your big head, cowboy.”

Joel raised a brow at you then grunted, resuming to kickstart the generator to power the gate. It came alive kind of loudly but you resigned, only to mount your horse again choosing to ignore whatever Joel or Ellie could be thinking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i totally didnt think the university chapter was going to be this long but it was asdfgh anyways, like always im over on tumblr @slutsofren crying about Pedro Pascal damn near daily if y'all wanna come cry toooooo

**Author's Note:**

> come yell at me on tumblr, @slutsofren!


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